funny Craigslist post

Check out this post on Craigslist's "missed connections" forum, 2/17/05 ---

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but if you were the girl at Columbia Pres Hospital today who just found out her parents died in a car wreck i just wanted you to know how HOT you are! damn you fine girl! I just didnt know how to approach you. but i wanted to so bad. i hope its not a bad time for me to be desperate? hey, drop me a line and lets see where this goes? ya never know.

Can you believe that guy? Can you believe I browsed the "missed connections" forum? Hmm.

Flying 

A couple 

The Gates, Central Park 

Shadows over ice 

She said, furrowing her brows

I run a mile in 7:30 now and I'm crazy proud. In high school gym class, I used to run it at least two minutes slower. I did 3 miles tonight at the gym, listening to my newest obsession, Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls, over and over at full volume. I don't know why I don't take to mixes like most people. I find one song and I latch on like a leach, listening to it until I can't stand it anymore. I got three Indigo Girls CDs in Rochester this weekend for a total of $3 at a tag sale. Aditi got the most beautiful bike I'd ever seen, for $20. I definitely coveted it, but it would have been quite the chore to bike it back to NYC. So I just brought back the Girls.

I gained an interesting nugget of wisdom from Professor Benedict today: you can furrow your brows, but not your eyebrows.

Clear Channel and Howard Stern decided to drop their mutual lawsuits. Read about it here:
http://www.forbes.com/2005/02/24/0224autofacescan04.html

Between the bars 

Arthur 

Foosball 

Songs, squash

I am now one of the zillion smart music-lovers who love Radiohead, thanks to Grant on 9 and the CD he lent me. It’s in my computer now, making me wish I had big speakers to shake this place, making me thankful I’m not still listening to Diana Krall. Although I discovered something interesting yesterday: the song A Case of You is actually Joni Mitchell’s. I’ve been listening to Mitchell lately, too, for the first time ever. I guess I’m a late bloomer to the classics.

The Underground is such a cuddly venue to play/sing. I performed there Tuesday for the first time and will probably be back there regularly. The place is at 108 and Amsterdam, and the music starts circa 10:30. I’ll be there this Tuesday, unless I’m snowed into Rochester, where I’m flying for the weekend to see Sam Haddad’s voice recital.

I accomplished what might be the most-ever consecutively lost games of squash yesterday. I didn’t want to give up and go home but I did (we would have been there all night otherwise. My arm got so weak and rubbery at several points that I couldn’t even get a serve in.) Thankfully, Tom Randall, my squash buddy, confessed that his mom used to be some sort of Badminton champion in Canada. So he’s genetically programmed to win. Unless he invented that Badminton line to cheer me up.

The Gates. More to come. 

[censored]

The chief news executive at CNN quit over remarks he made that U.S. soldiers meant to target journalists in Iraq (you need a free login to access this):
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17462-2005Feb11.html
More here: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050212/D886M8800.html

And the subhead to this article is "Bloggers are forcing truth to prevail."
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050211BlogExposureGetsCNNNewsExecFired.html

One of the most gripping parts of The Control Room, which I saw at SIPA last semester, was when an Al Jazeera reporter was killed. The other Al Jazeera staffers, in the movie, seemed convinced that the attack was intentional. The U.S. did shell the Palestine Hotel, where foreign journalists were known to stay. This guy, Eason, had won the duPont and the Peabody. (He wasn't some schmo.)

People have a right to express their views. It boggles the mind how much our society has regressed lately --- it's as though people want to be censored. And some bloggers are perpetuating the attack on freedom of speech and of the press, which is ironic because blogging is the freest publishing format out there. I'd say vigilante bloggers should watch the subjects they choose to attack before it bites them in the rear, but it already has (this story is about some hapless twentysomethings getting fired because of their blogs): http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1804&e=3&u=/washpost/a15511_2005feb10

I'm certainly not an advocate of restrictions on blogging content, silly ethics codes or the like. I just think people who utilize freedom of speech daily should seriously consider whether their actions could strip those freedoms from others. Should we be attacking people like Lawrence Summers and Eason Jordan, or should we let their remarks spark conversations, arguments and debates?

Aruba, Jamaica

There's an awful 80s song playing in my head right now. The name of it might be Hold on to the night, hold on to the memories. I can remember my mom joking once that she thought the words were hold on to the mammories.

Speaking of my mom, she's decided to fly us to Aruba for Spring Break. This strikes me as an opulent and entirely welcome development. My goals that week will be as follows: swim, read a book, get a tan.

I wrote the following piece, an event, for my literary journalism class. I'm going to post it below, and then either a) run a nice big chunk of miles or b) take the world's longest nap. Peace out, scouts.

The man in the front row

The room wasn’t hot, but the man sitting in the front row, middle chair, could have used a towel. Beads of sweat had been forming on the folds of his neck since he arrived. The neck, spotted with stubble, disappeared almost entirely into the collar of his shirt when he moved. And he moved often.

In front of him, two panelists who had noticed his awkward presence from the start of the lecture were trying not to look at him. The room at NYU’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life was crowded, but it seemed that looking at anyone besides the man in the front row was, for them, impossible. They shouldered their burden of discomfort in different ways: Udi Ofer, who represented the New York Civil Liberties Union at this casual Monday-night meeting of student journalists, flashed an occasional game-show-host smile after allowing himself brief glances at the man in the front. Village Voice writer Alisa Solomon, when she looked at him, set her jaw and looked to be willing her pixy-cut hair to not stand on end.

The moderator of the discussion, a solemn Betty Page lookalike, looked infrequently at the man in the front and appeared alternately shocked, bemused, and shocked by what she saw.

The subject of the talk was First Amendment freedoms. Certainly, no one in the audience could have argued that the man didn’t have the right to be there.

As Ofer began to cite search tools like Google’s National Security Archives and the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press, the head of the man in the front row began to droop. As Ofer discussed the Des Moines Register’s fearless story on subpoenaed peace demonstrators, the man was a disgruntled six-year-old. He pushed back on his heels, sending his chair back a good two inches on the floor. His coat crinkled like a candy wrapper.

The Page twin’s green eyes widened, her nose scrunching in a brief portrait of pain and disdain. The inner-workings of her brain were clear: is this man distracting people from the lecture? Yes. Should I do something?

Solomon briefly talked numbers. The percentage of cargo-bearing ships that entered U.S. ports unchecked before September 11: two, the same number of nostrils it took to become nearly paralyzed by the pungent smell of the man in the front. The percentage that entered unchecked after September 11: four, the number of conspicuously empty seats beside him.

When the event was drawing to a close, the man’s flabby arm shot up. The Page twin nodded in his direction, wearing apprehension on her face like so many freckles.

He ahhed, ummed, then asked a question. His voice was a hesitant, deep baritone. When he turned to the side, as he did several times during the asking of his question, his profile revealed a snub nose, plastic glasses and a beard.

Ofer praised the question as a great one, and then began to answer it. But before the first full sentence had fallen from his lips, the man in the front row had very clearly decided to call it a night. He picked up a thick piece of Na’an from the paper plate beside him. (A Middle Eastern dinner had been served before the talk began, and the man hadn’t, apparently, finished his meal.) He chewed loudly, staring not at Ofer, but at the bread.

When he’d finished devouring the Na’an, the man in the front row began to rummage like a squirrel through a paper bag he’d brought with him. He crunched, bunched and tore the bag, apparently not finding the nuts he sought within.

When Ofer finished his response, the man in the front row did not even blink in his direction.

A man three rows back asked a wrap-up question that looked, from the relieved expressions of the weary panelists, to make him the hero of the evening. A ripple of calm went through the room, followed by loud clapping. The lecture was over.

Ofer, Solomon and the Page girl looked pleased, as though they’d beaten their strange heckler. But as the man in the front row stood up, collected his belongings and began to trudge toward the bathroom, they realized nobody would emerge from the room smiling.